Yeah, this makes sense. Into Darkness performed below expectations and reducing the budget is just good business sense. They did the same with Wrath of Khan and we all know how that turned out. If anything, a budget cut is a good thing. A smaller budget means less pressure for the film to succeed and more creative freedom for the writer and director.

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Yes, I agree with what you're saying, but the budget cut for the next Bad Robot outing will likely be fairly trivial in comparison to the dramatic drop between TMP and TWOK.

From what I've read, you can count on pretty much the same production values and "on screen" money for Trek 3.

They should film it here in South Africa. We've got great locations, lower taxes, and if you want strange new worlds, there really is no stranger place anywhere. The only problem is that it nearly killed Benedict Cumberbatch.

This is for the best. STID cost a little too much, and had a little too many huge action scenes. I'm ready for something more small scale and more personal movie.

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As stated previously, the budget cut will probably be relatively small, and is extremely unlikely to lead to a "small scale personal movie."

IMHO, you can expect to see much of the same - possibly delivered in a fresh style contingent on the new director.

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Yeeeeup. With a smaller budget, looks would like dominate more than story. Unless you're dealing with Asylum level budgets, you're not going to get a small, low key, Star Trek film. They'r going to put then money into the look and visuals of the movie first.

This is for the best. STID cost a little too much, and had a little too many huge action scenes. I'm ready for something more small scale and more personal movie.

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As stated previously, the budget cut will probably be relatively small, and is extremely unlikely to lead to a "small scale personal movie."

IMHO, you can expect to see much of the same - possibly delivered in a fresh style contingent on the new director.

Click to expand...

Yeeeeup. With a smaller budget, looks would like dominate more than story. Unless you're dealing with Asylum level budgets, you're not going to get a small, low key, Star Trek film. They'r going to put then money into the look and visuals of the movie first.

Click to expand...

Most of the story writing budget for ST11 and 12 seems to have gone in to researching previous trek and other SF. It seems to me that if the budget was reduced enough, they would have to improve the story writing to make up for the reduced "look and visuals". It would be nice to have both improve but it seldom seems to work out that way. The story is usually left behind as the budget increases. Just off the top of my head, I would guess the budget for the next film should be about $70m.

Now those who believe money is the best criteria for how "good" a movie is might like to consider the following which lists Star Trek films in order of their profitability (Total Box Office divided by Production Cost, which is what investors are most interested in right?). The data can be found at the-numbers.com (if there is a more reliable site please let me know).

I am no expert and I realise a few things aren't accounted for such as advertising costs, the fact ST2 benefited from sets etc from ST1, DVD/Blu-Ray sales etc and possibly other factors. But I find the results interesting. Both ST1 and ST11 are probably a little high due to the "Wow, a Star Trek movie, I never thought that would happen (again)" factor. But generally speaking it would seem the smaller budget movies were more profitable. Yes, we live in a different world now (to some degree) but I would be happy with a much smaller budget.

Also, it seems to me, this order is not far from a reasonable list of best to worst. The only exceptions being (probably) ST3 and 5. Does anyone know of a inflation corrected box office list? It would be interesting to see how it compares to the above and whether I have to eat humble pie.

While I am at it I want to thank teacake for mentioning Moon. Just saw it. Great movie and it cost only $5m to make! Unbelievable. It used models to a large extent too. Way to go.

That's completely unrelated to the point here. The intent of the post seemed to be to assess the relationship, if any, between a film's budget and its quality, or at least its popularity. In order to make that comparison effectively, we'd need to have the budgets corrected for inflation. If you want to compare variable X against variable Y, then you need to filter out all other variables -- in this case, the third variable of inflation -- so that you can focus exclusively on the relationship between those two.